A passenger was hospitalized Friday, Aug. 17, after a helicopter made a hard landing on a Riverside Municipal Airport runway – ejecting the man and breaking off parts of the aircraft, Riverside police said.

Taylor Herrly, 20, was cleaning his work van at nearby Lou’s Lock & Safe when he saw the helicopter come in for landing.

After at least one failed attempt, Herrly said, the helicopter came down hard and struck the ground tail first. A man, later determined to be the passenger, was ejected.

Another man, the pilot, looked to be momentarily knocked out and was being tossed around like a “rag doll,” he said, because the helicopter’s engine was still running. The pilot, Herrly said, turned off the engine then immediately attended to the injured man lying on the ground.

Riverside police Officer Ryan Railsback confirmed a passenger was seriously injured after apparently being tossed from the helicopter. His condition was not known.

The impact caused the tail of the helicopter to break off and land about a dozen feet from the body of the helicopter, Herrly said, and a blade was launched over an airport fence, landing in front of a nearby business complex.

Beatriz E. Valenzuela is an award-winning journalist who’s covered breaking news in Southern California since 2006 and has been on the front lines of several national and international news events. She’s worked for media outlets serving Southern California readers covering education, local government, entertainment and all things nerd including comic book culture and video games. She’s an amateur obstacle course racer, constant fact-checker, mother of three and lover of all things adorable.

Jeff Horseman got into journalism because he liked to write and stunk at math. He grew up in Vermont and he honed his interviewing skills as a supermarket cashier by asking Bernie Sanders “Paper or plastic?” After graduating from Syracuse University in 1999, Jeff began his journalistic odyssey at The Watertown Daily Times in upstate New York, where he impressed then-U.S. Senate candidate Hillary Clinton so much she called him “John” at the end of an interview. From there, he went to Annapolis, Maryland, where he covered city, county and state government at The Capital newspaper before love and the quest for snowless winters took him in 2007 to Southern California, where he started out covering Temecula for The Press-Enterprise. Today, Jeff writes about Riverside County government and regional politics. Along the way, Jeff has covered wildfires, a tropical storm, 9/11 and the Dec. 2 terror attack in San Bernardino. If you have a question or story idea about politics or the inner workings of government, please let Jeff know. He’ll do his best to answer, even if it involves a little math.